Summary

This is a collection of short stories by a young physician, Stewart Massad, who completed a residency in obstetrics and gynecology and a fellowship in gynecologic cancer. The stories are all written in the first person, all physicians. The subjects include the physical/emotional demands of residency ("Fatigue"), especially as they strain a marriage; the motivations of a doctor who runs an abortion clinic ("Healers"); and a young doctor facing his own fatal illness and his experience as a patient ("Casualties"). While the stories do portray the difficulties (and often angst) of training, they do so without the despair/cynicism often found in other accounts of the same experience.

Commentary

If you are looking for portrayals of women as physicians, don't look for much here. There is one exception ("Change"), a story about a woman doctor in eastern North Carolina who defies racial norms and pays dearly. The rest of the stories contain women who are wives and girlfriends, some to be admired, others not . . . but the same could be said of the physician protagonists themselves.